Messaging platforms represent relationships between users in a variety of different ways. Users may be connected based on social relationships, business relationships, common interests, and/or engagement on a given issue or topic. For example, a social network may allow a user to identify one or more lists of friends and to communicate publicly or privately among various members of that list. These relationships may be represented as one or more connection graphs connecting users of the messaging platform to other users, entities, or content.
One common characteristic of messaging platforms is that user engagement tends to be higher among users with a larger number of connections in the connection graph. By extension, a new visitor of a messaging platform may be disillusioned by a lack of relevant content and may thus be less likely to activate a new account or to become a regular user. In some cases, growth of a user's connection graph may also be an indication of user engagement. A user with a rapidly growing connection graph may be heavily engaging, finding relevant content, and thus less likely to discontinue use of the service. Conversely, a stagnant connection graph may be an indication that the user is not engaging and not finding relevant content.
Identifying relevant content for users is not a trivial task. In some cases (e.g., for established users), the service has access to a large amount of user-specific data that can be analyzed to identify relevant content. In other cases (e.g., for new users or visitors), user-specific data is limited or unavailable. Thus, the difficulty in suggesting content to a user may depend on the type of messaging platform and the availability of data.